Ball catching. Can it be measured?

Abstract

Ball catching is a skill included in most tests for assessing the motor impairment of children with a mild motor deficit. To objectively measure ball catching short and long ball catching tests were developed to assess children between seven and nine years of age. The long test made use of a tennis ball machine to standardise the ball throwing procedure. The performance of the children was videotaped and scored at a later stage by means of a scoring system that allowed differentiation between several catching strategies. The short test made use of manually thrown balls and the number of successfully caught balls was used as the outcome measure. Reliability and validity of the tests was investigated in three studies with children from mainstream schools ( N =90, N =72, N =43). The Intra Class Correlation coefficients of test-retest and intertester reliability were good for both tests, ranging between 0.87 and 0.91. Between the short and long ball catching tests a correlation coefficient of 0.84 was found. Boys were better ball catchers than girls. Although further investigations are necessary, the results of these studies indicate that the rigorous standardised short ball catching test, consisting of 50 trials, is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring ball catching performance.

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